A PATERFAMILIAS.
It was early in the afternoon of Gitl's second Wednesday in the New
World. Jake, Bernstein and Charley, their two boarders, were at work.
Yosselé was sound asleep in the lodgers' double bed, in the smallest of
the three tiny rooms which the family rented on the second floor of one
of a row of brand-new tenement houses. Gitl was by herself in the
little front room which served the quadruple purpose of kitchen, dining
room, sitting room, and parlour. She wore a skirt and a loose jacket of
white Russian calico, decorated with huge gay figures, and her dark
hair was only half covered by a bandana of red and yellow. This was
Gitl's compromise between her conscience and her husband. She panted to
yield to Jake's demands completely, but could not nerve herself up to
going about "in her own hair, like a Gentile woman." Even the
expostulations of Mrs. Kavarsky--the childless middle-aged woman who
occupied with her husband the three rooms across the narrow
hallway--failed to prevail upon her. Nevertheless Jake, succumbing to
Mrs. Kavarsky's annoying solicitations, had bought his wife a cheap
high-crowned hat, utterly unfit to be worn over her voluminous wig, and
even a corset. Gitl could not be coaxed into accompanying them to the
store; but the eloquent neighbour had persuaded Jake that her presence
at the transaction was not indispensable after all.
"Leave it to me," she said; "I know what will become her and what
won't. I'll get her a hat that will make a Fifth Avenue lady of her,
and you shall see if she does not give in. If she is then not
_satetzfiet_ to go with her own hair, _vell_!" What then would take
place Mrs. Kavarsky left unsaid.
The hat and the corset had been lying in the house now three days, and
the neighbour's predictions had not yet come true, save for Gitl's
prying once or twice into the pasteboard boxes in which those articles
lay, otherwise unmolested, on the shelf over her bed.
The door was open. Gitl stood toying with the knob of the electric
bell, and deriving much delight from the way the street door latch kept
clicking under her magic touch two flights above. Finally she wearied
of her diversion, and shutting the door she went to take a look at
Yosselé. She found him fast asleep, and, as she was retracing her steps
through her own and Jake's bedroom, her eye fell upon the paper boxes.
She got up on the edge of her bed and, lifting the cover from the
hatbox, she took a prolonged look at its contents. All at once her face
brightened up with temptation. She went to fasten the hallway door of
the kitchen on its latch, and then regaining the bedroom shut herself
in. After a lapse of some ten or fifteen minutes she re-emerged,
attired in her brown holiday dress in which she had first confronted
Jake on Ellis Island, and with the tall black straw hat on her head.
Walking on tiptoe, as though about to commit a crime, she crossed over
to the looking-glass. Then she paused, her eyes on the door, to listen
for possible footsteps. Hearing none she faced the glass. "Quite a
_panenke_!"[10] she thought to herself, all aglow with excitement, a
smile, at once shamefaced and beatific, melting her features. She
turned to the right, then to the left, to view herself in profile, as
she had seen Mrs. Kavarsky do, and drew back a step to ascertain the
effect of the corset. To tell the truth, the corset proved utterly
impotent against the baggy shapelessness of the Povodye garment. Yet
Gitl found it to work wonders, and readily pardoned it for the very
uncomfortable sensation which it caused her. She viewed herself again
and again, and was in a flutter both of ecstasy and alarm when there
came a timid rap on the door. Trembling all over, she scampered on
tiptoe back into the bedroom, and after a little she returned in her
calico dress and bandana kerchief. The knock at the door had apparently
been produced by some peddler or beggar, for it was not repeated. Yet
so violent was Gitl's agitation that she had to sit down on the
haircloth lounge for breath and to regain composure.
[10] A young noblewoman.
"What is it they call this?" she presently asked herself, gazing at
the bare boards of the floor. "Floor!" she recalled, much to her
self-satisfaction. "And that?" she further examined herself, as she
fixed her glance on the ceiling. This time the answer was slow in
coming, and her heart grew faint. "And what was it Yekl called
that?"--transferring her eyes to the window. "Veen--neev--veenda," she
at last uttered exultantly. The evening before she had happened to call
it _fentzter_, in spite of Jake's repeated corrections.
"Can't you say _veenda_?" he had growled. "What a peasant head! Other
_greenhornsh_ learn to speak American _shtyle_ very fast; and she--one
might tell her the same word eighty thousand times, and it is _nu
used_."
"_Es is of'n veenda mein ich_,"[11] she hastened to set herself right.
[11] It is on the window, I meant to say.
She blushed as she said it, but at the moment she attached no
importance to the matter and took no more notice of it. Now, however,
Jake's tone of voice, as he had rebuked her backwardness in picking up
American Yiddish, came back to her and she grew dejected.
She was getting used to her husband, in whom her own Yekl and Jake the
stranger were by degrees merging themselves into one undivided being.
When the hour of his coming from work drew near she would every little
while consult the clock and become impatient with the slow progress of
its hands; although mixed with this impatience there was a feeling of
apprehension lest the supper, prepared as it was under culinary
conditions entirely new to her, should fail to please Jake and the
boarders. She had even become accustomed to address her husband as Jake
without reddening in the face; and, what is more, was getting to
tolerate herself being called by him Goitie (Gertie)--a word
phonetically akin to Yiddish for Gentile. For the rest she was too
inexperienced and too simple-hearted naturally to comment upon his
manner toward her. She had not altogether overcome her awe of him, but
as he showed her occasional marks of kindness she was upon the whole
rather content with her new situation. Now, however, as she thus sat in
solitude, with his harsh voice ringing in her ears and his icy look
before her, a feeling of suspicion darkened her soul. She recalled
other scenes where he had looked and spoken as he had done the night
before. "He must hate me! A pain upon me!" she concluded with a fallen
heart. She wondered whether his demeanour toward her was like that of
other people who hated their wives. She remembered a woman of her
native village who was known to be thus afflicted, and she dropped her
head in a fit of despair. At one moment she took a firm resolve to
pluck up courage and cast away the kerchief and the wig; but at the
next she reflected that God would be sure to punish her for the
terrible sin, so that instead of winning Jake's love the change would
increase his hatred for her. It flashed upon her mind to call upon some
"good Jew" to pray for the return of his favour, or to seek some old
Polish beggar woman who could prescribe a love potion. But then, alas!
who knows whether there are in this terrible America any good Jews or
beggar women with love potions at all! Better she had never known this
"black year" of a country! Here everybody says she is green. What an
ugly word to apply to people! She had never been green at home, and
here she had suddenly become so. What do they mean by it, anyhow?
Verily, one might turn green and yellow and gray while young in such a
dreadful place. Her heart was wrung with the most excruciating pangs of
homesickness. And as she thus sat brooding and listlessly surveying her
new surroundings--the iron stove, the stationary washtubs, the window
opening vertically, the fire escape, the yellowish broom with its
painted handle--things which she had never dreamed of at her
birthplace--these objects seemed to stare at her haughtily and inspired
her with fright. Even the burnished cup of the electric bell knob
looked contemptuously and seemed to call her "Greenhorn! greenhorn!"
"Lord of the world! Where am I?" she whispered with tears in her voice.
The dreary solitude terrified her, and she instinctively rose to take
refuge at Yosselé's bedside. As she got up, a vague doubt came over her
whether she should find there her child at all. But Yosselé was found
safe and sound enough. He was rubbing his eyes and announcing the
advent of his famous appetite. She seized him in her arms and covered
his warm cheeks with fervent kisses which did her aching heart good.
And by-and-bye, as she admiringly watched the boy making savage inroads
into a generous slice of rye bread, she thought of Jake's affection for
the child; whereupon things began to assume a brighter aspect, and she
presently set about preparing supper with a lighter heart, although her
countenance for some time retained its mournful woe-begone expression.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Jake sat at his machine merrily pushing away at a cloak and
singing to it some of the popular American songs of the day.
The sensation caused by the arrival of his wife and child had nearly
blown over. Peltner's dancing school he had not visited since a week or
two previous to Gitl's landing. As to the scene which had greeted him
in the shop after the stirring news had first reached it, he had faced
it out with much more courage and got over it with much less difficulty
than he had anticipated.
"Did I ever tell you I was a _tzingle man_?" he laughingly defended
himself, though blushing crimson, against his shopmates' taunts. "And
am I obliged to give you a _report_ whether my wife has come or not?
You are not worth mentioning her name to, _anyhoy_."
The boss then suggested that Jake celebrate the event with two pints of
beer, the motion being seconded by the presser, who volunteered to
fetch the beverage. Jake obeyed with alacrity, and if there had still
lingered any trace of awkwardness in his position it was soon washed
away by the foaming liquid.
As a matter of fact, Fanny's embarrassment was much greater than
Jake's. The stupefying news was broken to her on the very day of Gitl's
arrival. After passing a sleepless night she felt that she could not
bring herself to face Jake in the presence of her other shopmates, to
whom her feelings for him were an open secret. As luck would have it,
it was Sunday, the beginning of a new working week in the metropolitan
Ghetto, and she went to look for a job in another place.
Jake at once congratulated himself upon her absence and missed her. But
then he equally missed the company of Mamie and of all the other
dancing-school girls, whose society and attentions now more than ever
seemed to him necessities of his life. They haunted his mind day and
night; he almost never beheld them in his imagination except as
clustering together with his fellow-cavaliers and making merry over him
and his wife; and the vision pierced his heart with shame and jealousy.
All his achievements seemed wiped out by a sudden stroke of ill fate.
He thought himself a martyr, an innocent exile from a world to which he
belonged by right; and he frequently felt the sobs of self-pity
mounting to his throat. For several minutes at a time, while kicking at
his treadle, he would see, reddening before him, Gitl's bandana
kerchief and her prominent gums, or hear an un-American piece of
Yiddish pronounced with Gitl's peculiar lisp--that very lisp, which
three years ago he used to mimic fondly, but which now grated on his
nerves and was apt to make his face twitch with sheer disgust, insomuch
that he often found a vicious relief in mocking that lisp of hers
audibly over his work. But can it be that he is doomed for life? No!
no! he would revolt, conscious at the same time that there was really
no escape. "Ah, may she be killed, the horrid greenhorn!" he would gasp
to himself in a paroxysm of despair. And then he would bewail his lost
youth, and curse all Russia for his premature marriage. Presently,
however, he would recall the plump, spunky face of his son who bore
such close resemblance to himself, to whom he was growing more strongly
attached every day, and who was getting to prefer his company to his
mother's; and thereupon his heart would soften toward Gitl, and he
would gradually feel the qualms of pity and remorse, and make a vow to
treat her kindly. "Never min'," he would at such instances say in his
heart, "she will _oyshgreen_[12] herself and I shall get used to her.
She is a ---- _shight_ better than all the dancing-school girls." And
he would inspire himself with respect for her spotless purity, and take
comfort in the fact of her being a model housewife, undiverted from her
duties by any thoughts of balls or picnics. And despite a deeper
consciousness which exposed his readiness to sacrifice it all at any
time, he would work himself into a dignified feeling as the head of a
household and the father of a promising son, and soothe himself with
the additional consolation that sooner or later the other fellows of
Joe's academy would also be married.
[12] A verb coined from the Yiddish _oys_, out, and the
English _green_, and signifying to cease being green.
On the Wednesday in question Jake and his shopmates had warded off a
reduction of wages by threatening a strike, and were accordingly in
high feather. And so Jake and Bernstein came home in unusually good
spirits. Little Joey--for such was Yosselé's name now--with whom his
father's plays were for the most part of an athletic character,
welcomed Jake by a challenge for a pugilistic encounter, and the way he
said "Coom a fight!" and held out his little fists so delighted Mr.
Podkovnik, Sr., that upon ordering Gitl to serve supper he vouchsafed a
fillip on the tip of her nose.
While she was hurriedly setting the table, Jake took to describing to
Charley his employer's defeat. "You should have seen how he looked, the
cockroach!" he said. "He became as pale as the wall and his teeth were
chattering as if he had been shaken up with fever, _'pon my void_. And
how quiet he became all of a sudden, as if he could not count two! One
might apply him to an ulcer, so soft was he--ha-ha-ha!" he laughed,
looking to Bernstein, who smiled assent.
At last supper was announced. Bernstein donned his hat, and did not sit
down to the repast before he had performed his ablutions and whispered
a short prayer. As he did so Jake and Charley interchanged a wink. As
to themselves, they dispensed with all devotional preliminaries, and
took their seats with uncovered heads. Gitl also washed her fingers and
said the prayer, and as she handed Yosselé his first slice of bread she
did not release it before he had recited the benediction.
Bernstein, who, as a rule, looked daggers at his meal, this time
received his plate of _borshtch_[13]--his favourite dish--with a
radiant face; and as he ate he pronounced it a masterpiece, and
lavished compliments on the artist.
[13] A sour soup of cabbage and beets.
"It's a long time since I tasted such a borshtch! Simply a vivifier! It
melts in every limb!" he kept rhapsodizing, between mouthfuls. "It
ought to be sent to the Chicago Exposition. The _missess_ would get a
medal."
"A _regely_ European borshtch!" Charley chimed in. "It is worth ten
cents a spoonful, _'pon mine vort_!"
"Go away! You are only making fun of me," Gitl declared, beaming with
pride. "What is there to be laughing at? I make it as well as I can,"
she added demurely.
"Let him who is laughing laugh with teeth," jested Charlie. "I tell you
it is a----" The remainder of the sentence was submerged in a mouthful
of the vivifying semi-liquid.
"_Alla right!_" Jake bethought himself. "_Charge_ him ten _shent_ for
each spoonful. Mr. Bernstein, you shall be kind enough to be the
_bookkeeper_. But if you don't pay, Chollie, I'll get out a _tzommesh_
[summons] from _court_."
Whereat the little kitchen rang with laughter, in which all
participated except Bernstein. Even Joey, or Yosselé, joined in the
general outburst of merriment. Otherwise he was busily engaged cramming
borshtch into his mouth, and, in passing, also into his nose, with both
his plump hands for a pair of spoons. From time to time he would
interrupt operations to make a wry face and, blinking his eyes, to lisp
out rapturously, "Sour!"
"Look--may you live long--do look; he is laughing, too!" Gitl called
attention to Yosselé's bespattered face. "To think of such a crumb
having as much sense as that!" She was positive that he appreciated his
father's witticism, although she herself understood it but vaguely.
"May he know evil no better than he knows what he is laughing at," Jake
objected, with a fatherly mien. "What makes you laugh, Joey?" The boy
had no time to spare for an answer, being too busy licking his emptied
plate. "Look at the soldier's appetite he has, _de feller_! Joey, hoy
you like de borshtch? Alla right?" Jake asked in English.
"Awrr-ra rr-right!" Joey pealed out his sturdy rustic r's, which he had
mastered shortly before taking leave of his doting grandmother.
"See how well he speaks English?" Jake said, facetiously. "A ----
_shight_ better than his mamma, _anyvay_."
Gitl, who was in the meantime serving the meat, coloured, but took the
remark in good part.
"_I tell ye_ he is growing to be Presdent 'Nited States," Charlie
interposed.
"_Greenhorn_ that you are! A President must be American born," Jake
explained, self-consciously. "Ain't it, Mr. Bernstein?"
"It's a pity, then, that he was not born in this country," Bernstein
replied, his eye envyingly fixed now on Gitl, now at the child, on
whose plate she was at this moment carving a piece of meat into tiny
morsels. "_Vell_, if he cannot be a President of the United States, he
may be one of a synagogue, so he is a president."
"Don't you worry for his sake," Gitl put in, delighted with the
attention her son was absorbing. "He does not need to be a pesdent; he
is growing to be a rabbi; don't be making fun of him." And she turned
her head to kiss the future rabbi.
"Who is making fun?" Bernstein demurred. "I wish I had a boy like him."
"Get married and you will have one," said Gitl, beamingly.
"_Shay_, Mr. Bernstein, how about your _shadchen_?"[14] Jake queried.
He gave a laugh, but forthwith checked it, remaining with an
embarrassed grin on his face, as though anxious to swallow the
question. Bernstein blushed to the roots of his hair, and bent an irate
glance on his plate, but held his peace.
[14] A matrimonial agent.
His reserved manner, if not his superior education, held Bernstein's
shopmates at a respectful distance from him, and, as a rule, rendered
him proof against their badinage, although behind his back they would
indulge an occasional joke on his inferiority as a workman, and--while
they were at it--on his dyspepsia, his books, and staid, methodical
habits. Recently, however, they had got wind of his clandestine visits
to a marriage broker's, and the temptation to chaff him on the subject
had proved resistless, all the more so because Bernstein, whose leading
foible was his well-controlled vanity, was quick to take offence in
general, and on this matter in particular. As to Jake, he was by no
means averse to having a laugh at somebody else's expense; but since
Bernstein had become his boarder he felt that he could not afford to
wound his pride. Hence his regret and anxiety at his allusion to the
matrimonial agent.
After supper Charlie went out for the evening, while Bernstein retired
to their little bedroom. Gitl busied herself with the dishes, and Jake
took to romping about with Joey and had a hearty laugh with him. He was
beginning to tire of the boy's company and to feel lonesome generally,
when there was a knock at the door.
"Coom in!" Gitl hastened to say somewhat coquettishly, flourishing her
proficiency in American manners, as she raised her head from the pot in
her hands.
"Coom in!" repeated Joey.
The door flew open, and in came Mamie, preceded by a cloud of cologne
odours. She was apparently dressed for some occasion of state, for she
was powdered and straight-laced and resplendent in a waist of blazing
red, gaudily trimmed, and with puff sleeves, each wider than the vast
expanse of white straw, surmounted with a whole forest of ostrich
feathers, which adorned her head. One of her gloved hands held the huge
hoop-shaped yellowish handle of a blue parasol.
"Good-evenin', Jake!" she said, with ostentatious vivacity.
"Good-evenin', Mamie!" Jake returned, jumping to his feet and violently
reddening, as if suddenly pricked. "Mish Fein, my vife! My vife, Mish
Fein!"
Miss Fein made a stately bow, primly biting her lip as she did so.
Gitl, with the pot in her hands, stood staring sheepishly, at a loss
what to do.
"Say 'I'm glyad to meech you,'" Jake urged her, confusedly.
The English phrase was more than Gitl could venture to echo.
"She is still _green_," Jake apologized for her, in Yiddish.
"_Never min'_, she will soon _oysgreen_ herself," Mamie remarked, with
patronizing affability.
"The _lada_ is an acquaintance of mine," Jake explained bashfully, his
hand feeling the few days' growth of beard on his chin.
Gitl instinctively scented an enemy in the visitor, and eyed her with
an uneasy gaze. Nevertheless she mustered a hospitable air, and drawing
up the rocking chair, she said, with shamefaced cordiality: "Sit down;
why should you be standing? You may be seated for the same money."
In the conversation which followed Mamie did most of the talking. With
a nervous volubility often broken by an irrelevant giggle, and
violently rocking with her chair, she expatiated on the charms of
America, prophesying that her hostess would bless the day of her
arrival on its soil, and went off in ecstasies over Joey. She spoke
with an overdone American accent in the dialect of the Polish Jews,
affectedly Germanized and profusely interspersed with English, so that
Gitl, whose mother tongue was Lithuanian Yiddish, could scarcely catch
the meaning of one half of her flood of garrulity. And as she thus
rattled on, she now examined the room, now surveyed Gitl from head to
foot, now fixed her with a look of studied sarcasm, followed by a side
glance at Jake, which seemed to say, "Woe to you, what a rag of a wife
yours is!" Whenever Gitl ventured a timid remark, Mamie would nod
assent with dignified amiability, and thereupon imitate a smile, broad
yet fleeting, which she had seen performed by some uptown ladies.
Jake stared at the lamp with a faint simper, scarcely following the
caller's words. His head swam with embarrassment. The consciousness of
Gitl's unattractive appearance made him sick with shame and vexation,
and his eyes carefully avoided her bandana, as a culprit schoolboy does
the evidence of his offence.
"You mush vant you tventy-fife dollars," he presently nerved himself up
to say in English, breaking an awkward pause.
"I should cough!" Mamie rejoined.
"In a coupel a veeksh, Mamie, as sure as my name is Jake."
"In a couple o' veeks! No, sirree! I mus' have my money at oncet. I
don' know vere you vill get it, dough. Vy, a married man!"--with a
chuckle. "You got a ---- of a lot o' t'ings to pay for. You took de
foinitsha by a custom peddler, ain' it? But what a ---- do _I_ care? I
vant my money. I voiked hard enough for it."
"Don' shpeak English. She'll t'ink I don' knu vot ve shpeakin'," he
besought her, in accents which implied intimacy between the two of them
and a common aloofness from Gitl.
"Vot d'I care vot she t'inks? She's your vife, ain' it? Vell, she mus'
know ev'ryt'ing. Dot's right! A husban' dass'n't hide not'ink from his
vife!"--with another chuckle and another look of deadly sarcasm at Gitl
"I can say de same in Jewish----"
"Shurr-r up, Mamie!" he interrupted her, gaspingly.
"Don'tch you like it, lump it! A vife mus'n't be skinned like a strange
lady, see?" she pursued inexorably. "O'ly a strange goil a feller might
bluff dot he ain' married, and skin her out of tventy-five dollars." In
point of fact, he had never directly given himself out for a single man
to her. But it did not even occur to him to defend himself on that
score.
"Mamie! Ma-a-mie! Shtop! I'll pay you ev'ry shent. Shpeak Jewesh,
pleashe!" he implored, as if for life.
"You'r' afraid of her? Dot's right! Dot's right! Dot's nice! All
religious peoples is afraid of deir vifes. But vy didn' you say you vas
married from de sta't, an' dot you vant money to send for dem?" she
tortured him, with a lingering arch leer.
"For Chrish' shake, Mamie!" he entreated her, wincingly. "Shtop to
shpeak English, an' shpeak shomet'ing differench. I'll shee you--vere
can I shee you?"
"You von't come by Joe no more?" she asked, with sudden interest and
even solicitude.
"You t'ink indeed I'm 'frait? If I vanted I can gu dere more ash I
ushed to gu dere. But vere can I findsh you?"
"I guess you know vere I'm livin', don'ch you? So kvick you forget? Vot
a sho't mind you got! Vill you come? Never min', I know you are only
bluffin', an' dot's all."
"I'll come, ash sure ash I leev."
"Vill you? All right. But if you don' come an' pay me at least ten
dollars for a sta't, you'll see!"
In the meanwhile Gitl, poor thing, sat pale and horror-struck. Mamie's
perfumes somehow terrified her. She was racked with jealousy and all
sorts of suspicions, which she vainly struggled to disguise. She could
see that they were having a heated altercation, and that Jake was
begging about something or other, and was generally the under dog in
the parley. Ever and anon she strained her ears in the effort to fasten
some of the incomprehensible sounds in her memory, that she might
subsequently parrot them over to Mrs. Kavarsky, and ascertain their
meaning. But, alas! the attempt proved futile; "never min'" and "all
right" being all she could catch.
Mamie concluded her visit by presenting Joey with the imposing sum of
five cents.
"What do you say? Say 'danks, sir!'" Gitl prompted the boy.
"Shay 't'ank you, ma'am!'" Jake overruled her. "'Shir' is said to a
gentlemarn."
"Good-night!" Mamie sang out, as she majestically opened the door.
"Good-night!" Jake returned, with a burning face.
"Goot-night!" Gitl and Joey chimed in duet.
"Say 'cull again!'"
"Cullye gain!"
"Good-night!" Mamie said once more, as she bowed herself out of the
door with what she considered an exquisitely "tony" smile.
* * * * *
The guest's exit was succeeded by a momentary silence. Jake felt as if
his face and ears were on fire.
"We used to work in the same shop," he presently said.
"Is that the way a seamstress dresses in America?" Gitl inquired. "It
is not for nothing that it is called the golden land," she added, with
timid irony.
"She must be going to a ball," he explained, at the same moment casting
a glance at the looking-glass.
The word "ball" had an imposing ring for Gitl's ears. At home she had
heard it used in connection with the sumptuous life of the Russian or
Polish nobility, but had never formed a clear idea of its meaning.
"She looks a veritable _panenke_,"[15] she remarked, with hidden
sarcasm. "Was she born here?"
[15] A young noblewoman.
"_Nu_, but she has been very long here. She speaks English like one
American born. We are used to speak in English when we talk _shop_. She
came to ask me about a _job_."
Gitl reflected that with Bernstein Jake was in the habit of talking
shop in Yiddish, although the boarder could even read English books,
which her husband could not do.